


Seeing You In Sunset and 3D

by Val Mora (valmora)



Series: tie kink 'verse [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aged-Up Character, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Meeting the Parents, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Suits, accidental temporary mind control, puppet-sexual bro, worldfusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 10:55:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After years of text in a chat window and occasional lag-prone Skype calls, Tavros visits Dave for an entire week over spring break.</p>
<p>Seven days of unlimited opportunity for hands-on experience, marred only by occasional interactions with Bro.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing You In Sunset and 3D

**Author's Note:**

> Human Srinivasa Ramanujan was a brilliant mathematician.
> 
> Special thanks to:
> 
> \- Slipstream, who gave this a read-over; whose idea it was to remind people that I refer to this series as "tie kink 'verse" for a reason; and for allowing me to borrow her tooth and quadrant symbolism headcanon, where the upper right quadrant of teeth represents the flushed romantic quadrant.
> 
> \- My friend Ceci for the suit styles, because I have no sense of fashion
> 
> \- My beta, who worked hard to fix this up, and to whom I am eternally indebted. Any remaining errors are entirely my fault. (As is the fact that his neighbors may now look at him strangely, as the 11 PM shouting in his apartment about interspecies gay porn was all me.)
> 
> The "French parkour film" is District B-13, an astoundingly fun but not brain-invoking film.
> 
> This piece begins several hours after the epilogue to ["Seeing You By the Light of Fiber-Optic Stars"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/370633) and should be read after it. For those of you who'd prefer not to reread: Tavros is visiting Dave for a week over spring break, and arrived a couple of hours ago.

Tavros wakes up to the Earth sunset glaring in his face and his arm asleep under Dave's weight. Dave's thorax is hot against his through their t-shirts, cheek pressed stickily into Tavros's neck, and his sunglasses have fallen off from where they were pushed up on his head while they kissed after arriving home from the airport. 

The respiteblock door is still closed, and Tavros can't hear anything from the other side, but sunset isn't really "late" for humans, so Dave's bro probably isn't back yet.

He's not sure what time it is, and when he cranes his head to look for a clock on the nearby table, there isn't one. 

He wriggles his arm out from under Dave and clenches his hand through the pain, down to pins and needles, to almost-normal. Dave's breath whistles out through his cartilage nub, tickling at the hollow of Tavros's throat.

Tavros turns his head a little, feeling the tension of the muscles shift. He's lying on his side, head hanging half-off the corner of the bed to accommodate his horns, and they're heavy.

It makes the mattress shift, and Dave snuffles, then wakes up, hyper-alert and already going for the unsheathed sword next to the bed as he shoves Tavros down in preparation for a pin, before he slows, stops, collapses on top of Tavros, breathing shallowly.

"Didn't realize it was you," Dave says. He rolls off of Tavros and worms his way off the bed, pacing from one end of the room to the other, running a hand through his hair and shaking his head to settle it. There're still a few strands sticking up in back, from where Tavros mussed them.

_Do you wake up like that a lot,_ Tavros doesn't have to ask. Of course Dave does. He keeps an unsheathed sword next to his bed and has nightmares made from memories of dying.

"It's all right," he says instead, and gets up, taking the couple of steps over to Dave and curling a hand against the corner of his jaw, leaning down to kiss him briefly, just pressing their lips together and then parting. 

He's not sure whether kissing should still feel new after how long they were kissing before they fell asleep together, but it does. 

Dave doesn't shake his hand off, but he doesn't reach out to Tavros, either, and his pulse is quick in the hollow of his throat. Not very fast, but definitely faster than its baseline. 

"We can play video games or whatever, or if you're hungry..."

"Are you?" He remembers hearing somewhere that a lot of people like to eat at six, which he doesn't get because, well, Tinkerbull never makes him eat at regular times, and everyone at the communal hive operates on different schedules except for what they have to do in school.

"Naw." Dave shrugs. "Dinner tends to be pretty late here, so I'm cool." His ganderbulbs, shockingly red, flick to Tavros's face, then away again, before he straightens his shoulders. Tavros lets his hand fall.

"I'm not hungry yet either," he says.

Dave kneels behind him, picks his sunglasses up off the floor, and slides them on. It doesn't feel like being cut off, not exactly, because he can still remember how naked Dave looks without them, so he kisses Dave some more until they come off again, until they fall back in bed where they started. 

After, Dave rolls away, breath slowing as they cool down. His computer's been pinging for about five minutes. "Let me go tell whoever that is go to fuck themslves."

"I wouldn't mind checking my email, if that's okay." There's an ongoing forum debate about the human-made FS movie whose trailer is scheduled to come out this month, and that they're using CG for the monsters instead of real ones, like an Alternian version would.

Of course, in the human-made one the monsters won't die for real, either. That part sort of bothered him with the originals - a lot of the movies had rare monsters whose market price could have fed him for a week, and they just killed them because the action scenes demanded it.

There're rumors that the movie's going to be in English, too, which he has mixed feelings about, mostly negative, because there aren't that many trolls who speak English and he'll be upset if the movie has only humans as the main characters.

He also wants to see if Honeydo has posted the next chapter of their magnum opus, _On the Biology of Fiduspawn Beasts, including boilerplates, scanned slices, anatomical diagrams, and a handy guide on how to cope with sick ones other than culling, you freakish basement-dwelling wigglers._

"I gotcha." Dave gives him the password to the wireless and Tavros sits on the bed, his back to the wall, checking things on his husktop. 

On a whim, once he's ascertained that none of his favorite threads have updated, he closes the husktop and sets it aside, still plugged in using an Earth-to-Alternian transformer, then goes and stands behind Dave, leans over his shoulder with one hand on each of the arms of the chair.

Dave's checking Twitter and responding to someone's response to one of his tweets, so Tavros lets him get as far as posting it before kissing his neck.

Dave's head tilts to give him better access. "Nothing to eat there." 

"Mmhm." Tavros slides the flat of his tongue along the curve of bone that defines the join of Dave's shoulder and neck. Dave tastes faintly of salt, from sweating a little when they were curled up together; of his own body, sort of meaty and tinged with car exhaust; and of Tavros's red pheromones, an olfactory tap on the metaphorical shoulder of _this one's flushed quadrant happens to be mine, thanks._

"I take it that means you're not hungry for food."

Tavros scrapes his upper right canine tooth along the line of muscle up Dave's neck, then, embarrassed with himself, pulls away. There's a faint pale line drawn on Dave's skin, fading even now. "I'm really glad I came." 

"Not yet you haven't," Dave says, rattling it off on autopilot, and then his neck tenses, along with his back.

"Not yet," Tavros agrees.

Dave sits forward, stands up out of the chair and steps away from it. And then they're kissing again, Tavros bent down just enough and Dave probably up on his toes. Dave's mouth is warm and wet and tastes murky with sleep, and the small of his back under Tavros's hands is warm even with his shirt in the way.

+++

Dave's leg hitches higher around Tavros's waist, the seam of his jeans rough against Tavros's bared skin, and he gasps against Tavros's shoulder, his hands spread wide over Tavros's upper back.

Tavros, one arm going numb under Dave's ribs, shoulder mooshed into the bed, uses the other, wrapped around Dave's waist, to haul him in tighter.

Dave tips over onto his back, Tavros falling with him, and Tavros would be disappointed - this is the third time this has happened - except Dave's hips rock up against his, a reflexive upwards grind straight to where Tavros's bulge has started to emerge. And unlike the previous two times they've tipped over, Dave isn't shoving him off and pantomiming being strangled.

So Tavros shifts from half-lying on Dave to all-lying on him, and goes back to what they were doing before, careful to hold himself up.

Dave kicks his leg. It doesn't hurt, but it thunks against the metal, and the impact translates as sensation.

"What?" 

"Something in one of our jeans that I hope isn't dick hurts like fuck. Get off a sec."

Tavros rears back, watches Dave go through his pockets - oh, hivekey. Yes, that would probably hurt.

"You too."

Tavros empties one pocket and drops the assorted change off the side of the bed. He makes to do the same with the contents of the other, but Dave catches his hand. 

"What the fuck is this?"

"An, Infantranquilizer-style, multi-tool?"

Dave folds out the scissors and the can-opener.

"How did you get it on the plane?"

"It's," Tavros shrugs, "not metal?"

Dave makes a faint noise, closes it, drops it on the floor, and pushes his sunglasses back down from where they've slipped onto his forehead. "If you show it to Bro, don't."

"Okay?"

Dave pulls him back down, and this time they're not really kissing at all. Tavros's cheek is pressed against Dave's as they try to find a rhythm together, Dave rolling his hips up, Tavros trying to match him. Dave is all lean muscles and jagged edges, and his knee is digging into Tavros's thoracic striator bones, trying to pull him closer, or maybe - 

Tavros slows down, and Dave whimpers faintly, like he's crying, and tightens his arms around Tavros's shoulders.

"Like that," Dave gasps, "You're in time," and he pants against Tavros's neck, everything easy now except for the heat, the sweat gathering at the small of his back and on his thorax, the ache in his shoulders from trying not to crush Dave completely, and then the apartment door slams open.

In the scramble to look like they are not actually making out, Tavros ends up on the floor, sitting on the stuff from both their pockets, one horn tangled in a sheet. Dave somehow manages to be on the other side of the block, in the computer chair, feet propped up on the bed. Not that he's succeeding very well at looking nonchalant: there's a flush on his cheeks and all the way down his neck, and he's very deliberately disarranging his shirt to cover his lap.

Tavros hugs his knees and hopes that his nook isn't _quite_ open enough to have made a real mess yet. There's also the concern about whether or not Dave has a bucket anywhere.

He... needs to stop thinking about buckets.

The door to Dave's respiteblock opens. It's Dave's Bro, of course. He and Dave have similar faces, even with the sunglasses, but Bro is heavier in the shoulders.

Bro doesn't say anything, just leaning against the door jamb, watching them. The silence extends until Tavros can't bear it anymore and says, "Uh, hi, I guess, you're Dave's bro..."

"Yes. And you're the alien who has every intention of probing my little bro."

"Uh, that is, an unfortunate and -"

"Carry on." The door shuts.

"...what?"

The door opens. Dave narrowly dodges the bucket thrown at his head. He doesn't dodge the puppet to the face.

The door closes. 

Dave and Tavros stare at each other in shared horror.

"Dinner?" Tavros suggests, finally.

"Good idea."

+++

Bro is in the ablution trap during the _whole meal._ Which is sort of convenient, because while they're waiting for the water to boil Dave sits on the counter, which puts him right at a comfortable height for kissing.

By the time Bro is out of the ablution trap and padding around the apartment, Tavros and Dave are done eating, and are sitting on the reclining furnishing, playing video games.

Bro fixes himself something, then sits down between them, ducking under Tavros's horns to do so, and eats while watching the screen. 

Once the bowl is empty, he says, "Strife time."

"Got better things to do," Dave says, just as his character dies in-game.

"You strife?" Bro nudges a little at Tavros's elbow, and he drops the controller onto the floor.

"Uh, not, much, lately..."

"You a sword kind of dude?"

"Lances, actually..." Though he hasn't done much physical aggrievance since he got to Earth. He doesn't expect to need it.

"You any good with a staff?" 

"Not really."

Dave shifts his weight. "Leave the guy alone; he's a lover, not a fighter."

His bro doesn't even answer that. The game music keeps playing.

"Strife time," Bro says finally, and gets up off the reclining furnishing. Dave is sober-faced, not even a little pink with embarrassment, but he looks at Tavros and says, "I -"

"Can I watch?" Tavros asks.

+++

They're both beautiful. Dave's Bro with a sword in his hands is movie-star perfect, all muscles and swagger, moving too fast to follow. And Dave is - Dave is lanky and lean, and the way his thighs flex as he moves makes Tavros desperate to hold him. He's not fast; he's steady, in time like dancing, and even if it's clear that his Bro is holding back it's still gorgeous.

They train for an hour and a half or so, lit only by the glow of the city's lights. Tavros can still see them, the way their bodies twist into each other's momentum, blades catching the light of the single bulb by the door to the roof. 

Eventually, Bro ends up with his blade unsheathed at Dave's throat, Dave's sword in Bro's hand, and Bro says, "Yield?"

"Yield," Dave says, and Tavros isn't sure if what he hears in Dave's voice is exhaustion, or a thousand bitternesses from sweeps of doing nothing but losing, or both.

Dave is breathing hard when he sits down on the concrete next to Tavros and starts stretching. Bro is nowhere to be seen.

"That was really amazing," Tavros says.

Dave grunts, bending forward to fold his wrists over his sneaker-clad toes, knees straight. There's a faint patch of translucence in the shirt, over his lower back. From sweating. He smells good, like heat and his own rawness.

Dave spreads his feet apart, ninety degrees or more, and leans forward, elbows on the concrete, his forearms flat against it. 

"Have you always, been that flexible?" Tavros asks.

Dave glances up at him. "Used to be able to go all the way down, when I was little." He rocks forward a little bit, then folds his thorax over one leg, curling his fingers into the arch of his foot. Tavros's bulge unsheathes a little more. 

"That's still, pretty good," he says.

"It's handy sometimes," Dave admits, leaning over the other leg for a few seconds. He sits back up, crosses his legs. His thighs are tense under the cover of his jeans, hips opened up.

"Dave," Tavros says.

"What?"

"Can we, go back to your block?"

Dave pushes his sunglasses back up. "Thought you'd never ask."

+++

Tavros wakes up in the middle of the night, Dave curled up against his side. He gets out of the bed to get some water, finds Bro standing in the kitchen space snacking on a bag of some green vegetable that used to be frozen and isn't now.

He gets a mug out from a cabinet and fills it from the tap, managing to not get any of the smuppets wet.

"Thank you for letting me stay."

Bro swallows a mouthful of thawed green bean. "No prob. Gives baby David his own Goliath to play with."

"What?"

"Damn," he says, wonderingly, "You really are an alien."

"I kind of -"

"Don't like that word. I got it. You know the Bible?"

"Ive heard of it."

"Guy in it named David. Knows this giant named Goliath."

"Oh." _David,_ two syllables. It sounds a little like the Alternian term for one's Ancestor's quadrantmates.

Bro eats a few more green beans. Tavros refills the water again, goes back to the respiteblock, puts the water on the floor next to the bed, and gets back in next to Dave. 

He uses his husktop to look up the story Bro mentioned, while Dave breathes slow and even next to him. It sounds a little like a troll story, in some ways. The massive numbers of dead, the lack of respect for enemies. The xenophobia. 

\---

Dave wakes up at 10:48:47 AM like a firework just lit up beside him, and spends forty-one seconds panting, back against the wall, trying to calm down. He has no idea what set him off. Bird hitting the window or something, probably, maybe. 

He clambers over Tavros out of bed, shuffles into the main room. The TV's on, playing some sort of thriller. He bets that's what woke him up. Bro's messing around on his computer, probably doing some site management. 

Dave fixes himself a glass of apple juice and waits for Bro to finish whatever it is he's working on and attack. But he doesn't.

And doesn't.

Finally Dave grabs a sword himself and brings it sweeping -

The impact against the sword Bro used to block rattles through his bones.

Bro slurps at the juice he stole out of Dave's hand. "Attacking a dude while he's not expecting it. Uncool."

"Figured I better get my training out of the way."

Bro snorts. "And here I was being nice and giving you a day off so you could officially turn in your V-card."

"It's at the frame shop."

"Has the conductor even punched _touched alien dick,_ let alone _ate alien pussy_ or _gotten anally probed_? Get back in there and don't come out until you can pass as not getting boned at the phrase _alien dick._ "

"It was _gotten anally probed_. Give me some credit."

Bro's eyebrows stay firmly in place. "Bullet vibrators in a bag in the bucket under the sink."

"Didn't think you'd want your smuppets' toys being used on a real boy."

"Who says you're a real boy?" Bro stands up, sheathing both their swords, and pushes Dave towards the bedroom. "You already know how to kiss the boy."

+++

Second thing they do once Tavros wakes up, after brushing their teeth, is make out again. Tavros sleeps in pajama pants - his metal prosthetic ankles are pretty cold - but shirtless is closer to naked than they were last time, and Dave discovers the hard way that Tavros's ribs are a little ticklish without a shirt in the way.

It's good. It's - straddling Tavros's hips, grinding together, Tavros's hands gripping hard at his thighs, pulling them closer, Tavros's chest flushing dark and darker with arousal. Tavros calls a recess, sounding wrecked and taken apart, before either of them comes, but it doesn't really matter, with days ahead of them and nothing planned except to fuck enough to make up for all the time apart.

Besides, slowing down in the middle of sex can make the orgasm better. Give it time to build up, or something.

They come back to it ten minutes later, and this time Dave actually gets to see Tavros fumble his own pants down far enough to get his bulge out, so he can come into the bucket.

Dave knew, intellectually, that there was going to be a lot of jizz. He'd _heard_ it, during a makeout session last night. But seeing it drain into the bucket is another thing entirely, and it makes Dave feel a little inadequate.

Not that Tavros seems bothered, given the way he yanks Dave back down to the bed and starts cuddling afterwards. Head hanging off the top of the mattress to make room for his horns, one arm flung over Dave's waist, the other crammed awkwardly between their bodies next to Dave's so they can hold hands. Blanket pulled up over both of them. 

They fall asleep again.

+++

Dave wakes up hungry forty minutes and twenty-three seconds later, so he goes into the kitchen and makes himself a sandwich. Takes it to the computer to eat.

He's gotten a couple of emails in the past day or so, and one massive email thread from Terezi.

H4V3 YOU S33N TH1S? says one, with a link to an article about a case that's set to go before the New York state Supreme Court, on some minor detail of corporate tax law.

YOU SHOULD STOCK UP, says another, linking to a piece chronicling details of a bad cabbage harvest in Korea and the ensuing effect on kimchi supply.

Email number three is textless but has a jpeg file attached. It's a Paint-altered screencap from some animu in which a blonde girl is kissing a dark-haired boy on the forehead. Terezi has scrawled sunglasses on the girl's chin and colored the frills on her dress red, while the boy now has a massive rack and the back of his shirt has Tavros's symbol on it.

The fourth email reads, YOUR P3ST3RLOGS SM3LL L1K3 C4R4M3L SYRUP 4ND F4K3 STR4WB3RRY 4ND 1T 1S D3L1C1OUSLY N4US34T1NG. Dave isn't sure he wants to know how she's reading his pesterlogs with Tavros, though he's weirdly okay with her reading them at all. 

The rest of the emails are in similar veins, except for one, which chronicles an amusing anecdote involving Karkat, Terezi, Aradia, and an attempt to buy five yards of bee-print fabric to stuff into Sollux's recuperacoon.

Tavros resurfaces from sleep fourteen minutes and thirty-eight seconds after Dave woke up, and gets out of the bed. 

"Get whatever you want out of the fridge - there's bread in one of the cupboards," Dave says.

"What time is it?"

"One-seventeen." _Fifty-five, fifty-six_. "You got anything you wanna do today?" 

There's a click as Tavros opens his laptop. "Not really, I guess." He gets up off the bed and throws on the dirty shirt abandoned in the corner of the room, then opens the bedroom door and wanders out into the other room.

He comes back eventually, sits on the floor with his back up against the mattress, and they both sit in front of their computers all afternoon. 

Bro comes back at 7:35, glances in the doorway and says, "And they say abstinence-only sex ed is a waste of taxpayer money."

"But Dave and I can't get pregnant," Tavros says, with only a small pause before the word _pregnant_. "So why bother?"

" _Aliens_ ," Bro says, almost fondly. "Let me know when the chest-burster babies are due."

\---

In the morning, Dave calls a stint in the ablution trap before Tavros does, so in the meantime Tavros waits for his husktop to boot up and wanders out into the main part of the apartment. 

He regrets this as soon as he notices Bro standing in front of the mixing equipment. Or, more accurately, he notices what Bro is wearing: his habitual sunglasses, a polo shirt with the collar popped, very thin white briefs, and nothing else.

_Tavros never wanted to know where Dave's thighs came from._

In horror, he fixes his gaze on the robot poster on the wall, but like footage of spaceships being impacted by specks of dust, he can't look away.

And then Bro turns around and leans a hip against the equipment.

Tavros desperately tries not to think about Bro's bulge. It's not very effective. 

"Uh, hi. Uh."

Bro jerks his chin up in acknowledgement. 

"I'm just...gonna get some, uh food. And then."

"And eat it. Gotcha." 

Tavros blinks, transfixed by the overwhelming disturbing _there-ness_ of Bro's near-nakedness. All that hair. Is Dave that hairy? Tavros has no idea. The hair on Bros' legs doesn't match what's on his head; it's much darker.

"Potato chips in the cupboard over the sink," Bro says, then turns around to go back to his equipment. This breaks the tension, and Tavros is able to make his way over to the running-water basin, contemplate food, remember the sight of Bro;s package, and decide that he wants to get out of the room more than he wants food.

And Tavros had been looking forward to putting his hands all over Dave's bulge today, too. He's not even sure he can think about it without flashing back to -

He stares at the floor and fumbles his way back into Dave's respiteblock, feeling Bro's smugness from the other side of the room.

\---

Dave saunters back into his room from the shower, towel wrapped around his waist but anticipating getting naked again imminently. . Tavros is leaning back against the mattress and playing on his computer. 

Dave stands in front of the closet and drops the towel oh-so-casually onto the floor. Glances over his shoulder. Tavros isn't even _looking._

He turns around. "You gonna take a shower?"

Tavros grunts noncommittally and types something out on his computer keyboard.

"The way you get about Snakelpies is disgusting, just so you know," Dave says. "You even do the _this is ridiculous kinds of cute_ face and the purring noise."

"Mmwhat? Sorry, I wasn't listening." Tavros looks up, blushes faintly, and looks back at the computer screen, though his eyes flick back up once.

"Did you want a shower," Dave repeats. His boner shrinks, confused by Tavros's apparent preference for the FS forums.

"Not right now. Maybe in a half an hour?"

"Sure." Dave bends down to pick the towel up off the floor, hangs it up. Tavros looks up, but his eyes don't stick around long enough to appreciate the scenery.

Dave sits down on the floor next to him, leaning forward past Tavros's upper arm to see the screen.

It's not the Fiduspawn forum. It's 3zan. 

"I didn't know you were with Anonymous," he says carefully, hissing out the Alternian term for the 3zan community.

"I'm not," Tavros answers, scrolling down. "Sollux sent me a link to an, archived thread, about the status of xeno relationships in the Fleet."

"Banned, banned, culled," Dave guesses, and watches a couple of grubcorn-eating Troll Srinivasa Ramanujan .gifs scroll by.

"Maybe, maybe not," Tavros says. "The Enculturmoilers are pushing for, reciprocal recognition, because if Canada and the European Union are allowing xeno legal marriage, and granting, certain legal rights to, acknowledged long-term troll quadrant partners, then Alternia should be gracious and culturally sensitive."

"So Homeland Security should be expecting a bunch of refugee Enculturmoilers pretty soon."

"No, probably not. Not unless they do something without her permission." The set of pronouns referring to the Condesce are archaic, some of the only words of Old Alternian that are still in common use.

Tavros scrolls down the page, closes the tab. His browser window switches to Gmail, where he refreshes the display.

Dave curls into his shoulder, kisses at the rise of Tavros's collarbone. Tavros hums and blanks his screen, then turns a little towards Dave and kisses him close-mouthed.

Dave tries to follow him, but Tavros turns just enough away to stop him. He gives up on sex for the moment and goes to put on some clothes. "What d'you want to do today?"

Tavros scratches his elbow. "What would be good?"

_No sudden inexplicable disinterest in makeouts_. "Could just wander around."

"I'd like that." Tavros shoves his laptop off to the side and stands up, reaching into his bag for some clothes.

+++

They walk to Bro's third-favorite-ever, first-favorite-still-existent, record store. The owner knows Dave as Bro's little bro, even if he doesn't know Dave's name, and he gives a nod when Dave and Tavros walk in but no more than that.

Tavros goes through the bins slowly, fingers running over the record sleeves with a strange, intimate gentleness. The flex of the tendons in his arms as he looks through the records in the bin is mesmerizing. Dave wants to stand behind him, arms wrapped around Tavros's waist and chin hooked over his shoulder, watch the records pass under his hands, talk about them. 

It's not going to happen, not least because xeno relationships aren't afforded full legal protections in the US, especially Texas; and also because Tavros is tall enough that Dave would actually be smashing his face into his shoulder blade. 

The records spill out under Tavros's hands, one at a time, their covers dissected, the titles of the songs and the band names scrutinized. Over their conversation and the low murmur of _Bitches Brew_ from the store's speakers, Dave almost doesn't hear the ticking of the clock.

The day's beginning to cool down a little when they leave, but it's still hot as they walk back home, and Tavros is humming Art Blakey's _Moanin'_ to himself. Or not. It's in a different mode, and some of the improvisations are different. He listens a while before asking, "What're you singing?"

Tavros shrugs. "Something I saw on Troll YouTube once, a while ago."

"Huh." He shoves his hands a little deeper in his pockets. Tavros is wearing black jeans, like usual; he says that it doesn't affect the prosthetics, and shorts don't make enough of a difference for what's left of his thighs. Dave doesn't want to push more than Tavros wants to give, but at some point he wants to get Tavros into a pair of shorts - or naked, naked's good too - and spend a while looking at his prosthetics. Playing with the joints, watching them move. Take the paneling off and watch the pistons and levers as he bends his knees, flexes his toes.

They take the stairs up to the apartment, all the way to the top floor, and when they arrive Bro is sitting on the couch, sewing a smuppet.

Its nose gives a congenial bob in their direction. Dave ignores it.

\---

It's not that Tavros isn't interested in making out. It's that every time he thinks about kissing he also thinks about cupping Dave's ass, or laying his hands on the backs of Dave's thighs, and either of those _inevitably_ makes him think of Bro's near-nakedness making him feel young and out of control, unworthy. Not a good way to start sex.

So things stay at just-kissing all evening. Hands above the waist, legs to themselves. Kissing each other breathless.

+++

The mall is overly lit. Tavros keeps his sunglasses on, and he supposes he and Dave make an interesting pair, walking past the racks of clothes. One human boy, one troll, both wearing sunglasses indoors. Tavros hasn't seen a single other troll since he arrived here, but then again he's spent a lot of time in Dave's apartment.

They drift through an electronics store, past rows of computer monitors, laptop screens, a small display of Apple products. Racks of DVDs.

In between two shelves of TV show season packs, Dave muses, "Think they carry season DVDs of that troll crime drama that Terezi's been watching?"

They don't. Dave finds the human counterpart of the show, but not the troll version. Tavros isn't really surprised.

They make their way to a Bose store, and spend an hour examining all the speaker systems, headsets, cables, and diagrams. Tavros has to put the sample set of headphones on the back of his thinkpan cavity, because of his horns, and the expression Dave makes when he sees it is unreadable.

Dave stays there for a while, listening to the sample headphones, shoulders slouched and hands shoved in his jeans pockets.

Tavros can't see his eyes, but Dave's whole body posture says that he can't quite bear to take them off. They've never talked about money, but Tavros can take a hint when he needs to.

He gives Dave some time with the headphones and goes to admire some floor speakers.

Eventually Dave comes over, touches Tavros's shoulder. "Let's go," he says.

Tavros follows along, walking past storefronts of clothes, jewelry, women's shoes, handbags. Dave pulls him into one, and they flip through the racks of clothes.

Dave holds up a blue-striped white hoodie against his own chest, then raises an eyebrow in Tavros's direction. "I'd be waiting for the rain to fall and start the wet-hoodie contest," he says.

"What?"

"Shirts get clingy when they're wet, and nipples perk up in the cold. Imagine a bunch of girls in skimpy t-shirts throwing water balloons at each other and wearing nothing under their shirts."

Tavros does. It's moderately distracting, although troll female dominance sacs have different inflections in troll society than human female breasts do. Human female breast size, he's heard, is associated with notions of being able to feed offspring; whereas troll female dominance sac size is highly correlated with both hunting ability and status in the social hierarchy (since they're connected through the mechanism of calorie intake), and thus represents competence, leadership, and aggressiveness. Still sexy, but for different reasons.

Dave puts the hoodie back on the rack.

They wander on, past a couple of restaurants and a children's clothing store, and into a toy store, then out again. Past a women's shoe store and into a department store.

They pass through shoes and makeup displays on their way to the store map. Dave's about to get on the escalator going down to the basement, where casual teen clothing is, but Tavros stops him. 

"Suits are the second floor," he says.

Dave pushes his own sunglasses back up into place. "Sure, we can snazz up. Go compare fashion nooses and rock the Blues Brothers look."

Dave had him watch that film not long after they started talking again, after the Game. Before they got together.

"Definitely," Tavros agrees.

They start going through jackets and pants, looking for a set that will fit Dave; somewhere along the way they pick up a white shirt, and a black tie. He disappears into the changing room; Tavros waits outside the door.

Dave opens the door, takes one slouching step into the corridor.

He looks good. He doesn't have a belt on, but the shirt is tucked in, and - 

Dave bows his head, holding an imaginary hat in place. "I'd especially like to thank all the representatives of Illinois' law enforcement community -" and then he looks up, over the frames of his sunglasses, and grins at Tavros, who's already laughing at the way Dave's flattened out even the hint of his accent to imitate Elwood.

Twenty minutes later, they're standing side by side in a mirror, in matching, barely-fitting suits and almost-matching sunglasses, grinning in the mirror at each other.

" _How much for the little girl_ ," Dave whines, and then " _Sell me your children,_ " while Tavros has to muffle his laughter in his hands, because the store is _really quiet,_ and it's turning into chirruping, which is incredibly embarrassing because that's even louder.

"What is _that_?" Dave asks, dropping the impression to watch Tavros. "Are you making bug noises?"

Tavros nods, calming down a little. The chirruping stops.

"How do you do that?"

"It's, uh, vibrating some of the windhole membranes differently, I think. It's sort of involuntary."

"Cool." Dave licks his lips, then opens his mouth like he wants to say more, but doesn't. "I'm gonna go spelunking in the depths of suit hell. Wanna join me?"

"Sure," Tavros says.

+++

Somehow Dave manages to dig up a black shirt and maroon tie; it makes him look washed-out and sickly-pale, though his mouth turns into a smear of bright pink that Tavros wants to kiss.

Dave stops him from even trying on a grey suit - _Jesus it'll be a full-on incursion by Karkat wall-of-texting us into submission and he should butt his face out_ \- and instead has him try on one in navy blue, which makes Tavros uncomfortable, a little, remembering old warnings not to dress above his station.

When Tavros steps out of the changing room, Dave reaches for him, fingers curling in the sleeve of the jacket.

"Looks good," he says. "Let's find you a tie."

There are literally hundreds of ties on display, in as many colors and patterns. Tavros gravitates towards the ones in the orange range of the spectrum, by force of habit, but Dave stops him, saying, "How's this?" and holding up one in pink-and-green paisley. Mostly pink.

"I don't -" Tavros manages, before Dave is hanging it around his neck. "Dave, I don't, no, this is," 

"Do you not like it because you think it's ugly or because you think you're not allowed to wear anything that isn't in black, grey, or orange. Because last I heard your passport is blue and covered in bald eagles surfing amber waves of grain." 

"It's about - it's about me, about the fact that, I _like_ my blood. Hemoism is... stupid, but that's different from, from wanting to rebel against - you're wearing a red tie, right?"

"Yeah."

"And you like red, and it's the same color as your eyes."

"Yeah."

"But it _doesn't necessarily_ mean you want to, to, vote Republican, in the next election."

"Fucking hell no."

"Like that."

Dave makes a little noise and unwraps the tie from around Tavros's neck. "Pick out three you want to try on," he says. "I saw something I want to show you." He disappears off into the depths of the store. Tavros goes back to looking at ties.

He puts the pink-and-green tie back, and walks around the table a couple of times, looking at them. There's one that's black with vermilion stripes that he kind of likes, one that's dark blue with little gold star-speckles, and one that's green, with a sort of square design in the same color that shows up when the fabric shifts. He likes the geometric pattern, and it'll at least make Dave happy that he's venturing into a coldish area of the visible color spectrum.

He gets to the changing room area and knocks on the single closed door - they're the only people in the store, and the staff haven't bothered them since Tavros said they were just looking - and Dave opens the door and

and Dave's wearing a light grey suit with _faint orange pinstripes_ and the tie lying not-yet-tied around his neck is a dark warm bronze and 

Tavros shuts the door, pulls him close, and kisses him.

Dave's tongue strokes against his, mouth curving to make room for both of them, and he drops back down onto his heels, breaking the kiss for a moment and pushing his sunglasses up.

"Easier without the height difference," he says, a smile half-flickering into existence before fading, and he kneels on the bench in the corner of the changing room, legs apart so his shins will fit, which puts him closer to Tavros's height.

It is easier without the height difference, but Tavros already knew that, from kissing lying down. Dave's fingers tangle in his mohawk, drawing him closer, and Tavros sinks a little deeper into him, tasting his warmth before pulling back to breathe.

"I, uh, got these ties," Tavros says, picking them up from where he dropped them on the floor. Dave hangs each of them around Tavros's neck in turn, then says, "Which one do you like best?"

"This one," Tavros says, pointing to the green, and Dave drapes it in place, ties it slow and careful, his hands curving over the fabric, eyes on the knot he's tying. At the end, he smoothes the tie with the flat of his palm, hand sliding down Tavros's thorax, and then his eyes come up to meet Tavros's. The red is dark, beautiful; the light's so bright that his pupils are pinpricks, swallowed up in color.

"You look good," Dave says.

_You look like you're mine,_ Tavros doesn't say, because wow, no, they just went through the whole color representation thing, even if it is hot and Dave did it on purpose. 

"Thanks," he says instead, and kisses him again.

+++

They make their way empty-handed back to the apartment, and as soon as the door is closed behind them they're stumbling into Dave's room, hands on skin under clothing and legs knocking awkwardly together.

They spend a while standing in the middle of the room, kissing awkwardly, before Tavros pulls away and starts unbuttoning his shirt, pulling it off and tossing it onto the bag with his stuff. Once Dave is done untangling his shirt from around his sunglasses, he stretches himself over Tavros in bed. 

Dave's shoulder blades are flared, jutting up out of the smooth lines of his back, and Tavros strokes them, traces the dip of his spine. Has his hands on the small of Dave's back for that first slow grind, feeling the sinuous wave of Dave's hips and spine. Dave feels beautiful, not too heavy, warm skin sticky with sweat, bloodpusher beating heavy against Tavros's thorax.

Another grind, slower this time, their mouths open and pressed together but too distracted for real kissing. Just breathing against each other. Dave's forearms under Tavros's shoulders to hold himself up.

Dave is - he can feel Dave, through their clothes, and that's not exactly new but it's still amazing, and the way Dave is getting worked up while Tavros isn't even all the way unsheathed yet is even hotter. He wants - he sort of wants to watch Dave fall to pieces above him.

"Can I -" he starts, and Dave slows, eyes shuddering open. "I want to touch you."

Dave huffs out a breath and sits back on his knees. "Yeah," he says, hands going to the fly of his jeans, and once it's open Tavros brushes his fingertips against him through the cloth of his briefs. Dave's hips shift, just slightly, and then he says, "Sharing is caring. Mind if I touch yours?"

"No," Tavros says, and lets Dave open his jeans for him.

+++

When Bro gets home, they're playing video games and sitting on the futon in the main room. 

Bro opens the door and says, "Flies up before I get an eyeful of jailbait dick."

"Fuck you; we're both seventeen," Dave says.

"Flies up before I'm looking at _my little bro and his boyfriend's dicks_."

Dave lets go of the controller long enough to give Bro the finger, although this also means he dies in-game.

Tavros's hands still feel warm with the memory of being wrapped around Dave's bulge, curving to hold his hip. The games are because they're waiting out a refractory period and the last round was on the futon, but Tavros keeps this to himself.

+++

A grinning, lacquered, demonic face is peering over Dave's shoulder at Tavros.

And then it moves.

Tavros _screams_ and Dave is jumping over him and - 

And nothing.

Bro is standing, frozen, in the middle of the floor, holding the puppet; the point of Dave's sword is an inch away from his heart, and Dave's chest is heaving, eyes wide with residual terror.

And inside Tavros's head something is swearing, terrified and -

He breathes out. Lets it go, the tension and the flex of his powers and the old memories, and Dave's Bro stands up straight, throws the puppet over his shoulder.

"Don't let me wake you," he says, sauntering out of the room and closing the door. On the other side, there's a thump on the floor, nearly covered up by Dave throwing the sword across the room and collapsing, trembling slightly, onto the bed.

"Jesus H. Zombie-Raising Christ on a graham cracker with Santorum filling," Dave swears.

"I'm sorry."

"No, Bro wins a fucking gold medal in the Blame Olympics."

Tavros folds his legs, sitting up all the way, and reaches to rest his fingers over the back of Dave's hand. "If I hadn't yelled..."

"Then he would've kept trying to freak you out. What did you do to him, anyway?" Dave turns his hand over, fingers curling over Tavros's.

"I think I just...stopped him. Like I can do with animals."

Dave heaves out a breath, and says nothing. His hand is still shaking, so finally Tavros squeezes his palm and says, "You okay?"

"Better than Bro watching Sesame Street," Dave says.

Tavros fights back a grin. "Want to watch a movie?"

"Martial arts thing sound good?"

"Yeah, or shonen anime." Dave opens his mouth. "No, shut up, don't make that face, _I know you watch Bleach._ "

"For Irony only, that fickle mistress," Dave says piously.

"Terezi says you masturbate to -"

"Christ _shut up_ ," Dave says, and kisses him.

They stream a tremendously cheesy Chinese action film onto Dave's laptop and watch it in bed, leaning back against the wall, curled up together.

\---

Somewhere around forty minutes into a French parkour film Tavros says, "Please tell me they stay caliginous."

"They stay caliginous," Dave parrots back, and watches one of the two male leads' back muscles flex with exertion. "If it helps, in the sequel, the cop cross-dresses."

"Does he look good in it?"

"His shoulders don't."

Tavros sighs. "Are they even going to kiss?"

"Nope."

"Do they end up moirails?"

"You tell me; you're the quadrant expert here. But probably."

Tavros groans and buries his face in Dave's shoulder, although it's closer to armpit because of his horns not being able to magically phase through the wall. "I just want human caliginous romances that stay that way; is that too much to ask?"

"You realize that this thing we've got going on here flipped too?"

"No it didn't."

"Your mouth says no but our pesterlogs say yes."

"At the time, I didn't...think of you as a rival. And then you trolled me back, in a way that... made me look up to you. And by the time we were out of the game I knew how to read you. So...I think we were pretty consistent."

Dave kisses him to cover up the way _look up to you_ makes him feel about ten feet tall, and the way his chest hurts with the implications of _knew how to read you_. Maneuvers them both into lying down, hands on each other's skin.

+++

Bro doesn't try anything Friday morning, which is good, because by 6:35 Dave has his mouth full of chocolate-flavored-condom-covered alien dick.

Not that the condom's all that useful when Tavros comes, but up until that point it works just fine, and anyway Tavros is good at giving advance warning.

When Tavros returns the favor, Dave curls his hands in the sheets, over his own hips, trying not to give in to the urge to touch Tavros because that would just end with the bad kind of hair-pulling and he is _never_ going to let himself be bad at getting head. The compulsive talking throughout he's going to work on; who even says "Im glad you have a tongue" in the middle of sex.

Afterwards, he half-lies on top of Tavros, kissing him to try to get rid of the aftertaste, before burying his face against Tavros's neck, breathing in the smell of him, familiar now. 

He falls asleep like that, and wakes up curled into Tavros's side, his feet at Tavros's shins, Tavros snoozing quietly beside him.

That evening, Tavros prints his boarding pass, packs up his travel bag. They get takeout for dinner, and Bro eats with them, not saying much except to embarrass Dave, because Bro is an ass.

Bro makes Dave do clean-up while he and Tavros play video games together on the futon, then hauls Dave up to the roof for a strife. Lets him show off a little, too, even if Dave doesn't win, but that's old news, and Tavros definitely appreciates the view.

+++

Dave's cell phone alarm goes off an hour before they have to leave for the airport, so Dave pokes Tavros's shoulder a couple of times to wake him up.

Tavros, groggy and sleep-mussed, frowns blurrily up at Dave and says, "Stay."

Dave kisses him, close-mouthed, and helps him up. The sopor supplements aren't really a replacement, and it's been showing for the past couple of days: sleeping longer, more difficult to wake.

"Upsie-daisy, rise and shine," Dave says, and herds him off to the shower.

After, he watches Tavros dress, because if they won't see each other in person for a long time he wants to enjoy it.

All these orgasms must be making him soppy.

After a quick breakfast Tavros kisses him, once, shallow and sweet, and then picks up his bag.

The bus ride is at once interminable and instantaneous, though it's closer to a total of forty minutes and five seconds, and then he's standing with Tavros at the entry to the security line.

"Thanks for letting me stay," Tavros says.

Dave swallows. "Uncool to let a guy sleep on a bench when you got a perfectly good bed to loan him."

"Half a good bed," Tavros corrects, quietly, with a secret too-fond smile.

Dave's chest is doing its best to persuade him to frog-vomit and hack up all his insides to show them off.

"Yeah," he says, lamely, because what he really wants to do is be back in his bedroom with Tavros, kissing his neck while they jerk each other off. "You know I'm gonna be covered in bitches when I get home, but if you let me know when you get back I might be able to find some time for you. Bros before hos, and shit."

"I'll let Terezi know," Tavros says, grinning.

"What? No way, dude, she's a completely respectable liberated woman who is Going and Getting."

"Never mind," Tavros says, and his smile turns awkward again. "I'll talk to you later."

"Like I said, I'll find the time somehow."

Tavros gets in the security line. Dave turns around and walks out of the airport to catch the bus because waiting around watching him stand in line would be ridiculous, even if the fact that Tavros's horns don't quite fit through the metal detectors is kind of hilarious.

The bus ride home Dave fills with a playlist he's been struggling with. He's starting to think he'll have to send it to Tavros for suggestions.


End file.
